Clogging the toilet bowl of equality

What fools we are, us women. Prancing around with our right to vote and our equal rights amendment as though they mean something. Thinking we can have our cake and eat it too (and if we eat it standing up in the kitchen it doesn’t have any calories).

Well, I have news for you, America. As much as we say the women’s movement has helped us come a long way, baby, we have been deceived. Like teenagers who get overly excited when a celebrity retweets them, we have been fooled into thinking we matter.

Think I’m crazy? Well, let me just give you an example of how far we haven’t come.

There is a segregated place that women are forced to go to almost on a daily basis that is so perverse, so medieval, so inhumane, it makes one think we haven’t moved forward one iota from the Dark Ages.

Naturally, the place I’m talking about is the women’s public restroom.

Yes, even though we finally have trendy T-shirts featuring Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s face, the fact that we are still forced to use these, dare I say, “facilities,” is outrageous. I mean, we can make someone with Julia Child’s voice a star and yet we can’t come up with a better bathroom system than the current one we have?

If you have never entered into a women’s public restroom (re: you’re a man who didn’t have the nerve as a kid to take the dare from your friends), let me enlighten you.

You’ll first recognize a women’s public restroom by the line outside of it. A line that swoops and curves around in a fashion that should never be seen outside of an amusement park (and only then in cases where it’s a ride that’s going to make you vomit in the fun way). Slowly and painfully do you watch the women in this line zombie shuffle…and shuffle…and shuffle…and shuffle…pausing to let a tumbleweed amble by…and shuffle, until finally they reach the door, where they wait in another line inside the restroom (since there are only two stalls to make way for the gigantic, unnecessary couch in the corner).

Mind you, this whole time their bladders are aching with the fire of a thousand menstrual cramps.

After what seems like a Bugs Bunny cartoon passing of time (the sun went up, sunk down, the moon rose, the sun came back up, back down, the moon rose…) they finally reach the stall door. And here is where the fun part begins.

Whoever was the first woman to decide it would be much more sanitary to “hover” over the toilet seat rather than making actual cheek-to-seat contact should be made to wear diapers and banned from all toilets. As for those of you that continue to “hover,” I’m going to let you in on a little secret.

Contrary to myths circulating fourth grade classrooms the world over, you can’t get cooties from a toilet seat and there is no such thing as a South American poisonous spider that hides under the lids and bites your lady business when you sit down. So sit your happy little ass down. Because you know what happens when you hover? You sprinkle when you tinkle. And you never, ever, clean it up. Which, of course, forces the next woman to hover, and the next, and the next…

BECAUSE NO ONE WANTS TO CLEAN UP YOUR PEE, YOU DISGUSTING HEATHEN!

And then, of course, there are the women who think they need to use a wad of toilet paper roughly the size of a basketball to clean their vaginas when they are done. This, in turn, causes the toilet to clog and also causes a shortage of toilet paper. Which forces the woman in the one lone stall that still has toilet paper to ration it out amongst her brethren, which merely slows down the entire operation and makes the bitter writer at the end of the line seriously weigh the pros and cons of getting a “urinating in public” ticket.

But wait, what’s it like on the other side then, you ask? Well, according to my husband, who for purposes of anonymity I will only identify here by the code name Ryan Hugene Huddle, men have rules of etiquette when it comes to public restrooms.

“When you first walk in and there is already someone at the urinal, you take the farthest one away from them. You always want at least one urinal between you and the other guys. If it’s not very crowded, you can even wait until someone finishes so as to avoid the ‘right next to each other’ urinal action.”

“But what if it’s really crowded?” I asked.

“Well, you can’t avoid peeing beside each other forever. Sometimes you just have to do it. But, honestly, when it comes down to it, we’ll just pee right there in the street.”

And there it is. Ladies, it’s sad but true what this says about our era. We may have burned our bras and went overseas to fight in wars, but when it comes down to it, we still can’t pee in the street…at least, not very discreetly what with our comically large, bowling-ball-sized wad of toilet paper and all.